Launching a pizzeria without depending on the platforms
Opening without the platforms entirely is usually a mistake — they are the cheapest marketing a new pizzeria will ever buy. The workable version is to join them deliberately, for a fixed purpose, with a plan for moving regulars off them. Reach first, margin second, in that order.
Why "no platforms from day one" usually fails
In month one nobody knows you exist. A website ranks for your own name, which nobody is searching yet, and your Google Business Profile has no reviews to rank on. The app is where people who have never heard of you are choosing dinner, and being absent from it is not a stand — it is invisibility with a moral attached.
The pizzerias that manage direct-only from day one almost always have something else doing the discovery: an existing following, a location with heavy footfall, or a market stall that ran for two years first.
A sequence that works
| Phase | What you are buying | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Months 1–3 | Reach at any price | Join the platforms. Accept the commission as an advertising budget. |
| Months 3–9 | Recognition | Every box carries your address. Cards in every bag. Google Profile properly filled in. |
| Months 6–12 | Habit | Direct ordering live and genuinely good. One reason to use it that the app cannot match. |
| Year 2 | Margin | Measure the split. Push the direct share. Renegotiate or drop the weakest platform. |
What to get right before you open
- The domain, in your own name. Before the signage, before the menus. £10.
- The Google Business Profile, complete. Real hours, real photos, the website link. More people will find you through the map than through anything else you do.
- A page with the menu, prices, hours and a tappable phone number. That is the whole requirement.
- Allergen information in writing. Required for online and phone orders, and far easier to do once at the start than to retrofit.
- Your address printed on the packaging. Order the boxes with it on. Reprinting later is the cost of not thinking about it now.
The one platform decision worth making early
If you have a driver, or can get one, self-delivery rates are dramatically lower — Uber Eats publishes 13% when you deliver against 30% when they do. That single choice halves the cost of the acquisition phase, and it is much easier to set up at launch than to switch to later.
What each ordering route costs
What success looks like at twelve months
Not zero platform orders. A healthy split is somewhere around half and half, with the platform half still bringing new names and the direct half being people who know exactly what they want. If you are at 90% platform after a year, the conversion step never happened — and that is a marketing problem, not a pricing one.